1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to techniques for reducing document generation times in systems that dynamically generate web pages or other electronic documents in response to user requests. More specifically, the invention relates to software architectures and predictive prefetching methods for increasing the degree to which document generation subtasks can be performed in parallel.
2. Description of the Related Art
The task of dynamically generating a requested electronic document, such as a web page, commonly involves the execution of multiple data retrieval subtasks. Each such subtask may, for example, involve the generation of a service request for content used to generate the requested document. To reduce document generation times, some or all of these data retrieval subtasks may, in some cases, be performed in parallel. In many cases, however, the data retrieval subtasks cannot be performed in parallel because one subtask is dependent upon the results of another.
For example, the task of generating a web page may involve sending an initial service request to a service that returns a variable list of items represented within a database. For each item in this list, a second service may then be called to request catalog content or other data associated with that item. Assuming the list of items can vary from one page rendering event to the next, the details of the calls to the second service cannot be accurately determined until the first service has returned the list. Consequently, using existing methods, the requests to the second service must be postponed until the initial service request is completed.